‘Praying for rain’: How New York farmers are dealing with drought — and unexpected brush fires

This year, the especially dry conditions also mean that the Hudson Valley faces a heightened risk of wildfires — something typically unheard of in the area. Parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have all seen wildfires in early November, with a massive fire on the New Jersey-New York state border still raging as of Monday.

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution

The Flores González brothers’ revolutionary innovation has been to turn a heretofore indigestible, but massive and accessible, source of fiber, biomass, water, and protein—the agave leaves or pencas—into a valuable animal feed, utilizing the natural process of anaerobic fermentation to transform the plant leaves’ relatively indigestible saponin compounds into digestible carbohydrates and sugar.

The Southwest Offers Blueprints for the Future of Wastewater Reuse

What’s clear is that the Colorado River can no longer be relied upon to meet the water needs of an increasing population. If we continue asking so much of it, we have to start easing those pressures. Water reuse is imperative if the driest parts of the world continue growing without destroying the environment that relies as much on water as we do.

Smallholders: striving for autonomy

Having other income streams than farming is not only because you can’t live on small scale farming (you can’t) but also a way to allow you to run the farm according to your ideals rather than to the dictates of the market, banks or the government. A “day job” can in that way strengthen the autonomy or at least the feeling of autonomy